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When Tifa mentions she’s running late, Vincent must look so visibly terrified that she immediately cards her fingers through his hair, pressing his face to her chest as nails scrape gently across his scalp. He breathes her in, but it does nothing to quell his panic. “I’m sure it’s coming,” she offers, after a moment of hesitation, though they both know it’s a lie. Tifa is the most punctual person he’s ever known—and she is also a terrible liar. Galian Beast’s nose has never been wrong, after all.
So he fashions his fears into a cloak of denial, wraps it tightly around all his senses because surely after all those years, after everything Hojo had done to make him more monster than man—it should be improbable, impossible. And yet—
Once he thought it was improbable he would ever want to rejoin the living world instead of serving out the rest of his penance in solitary confinement. Then the lid was lifted and the first thing he smelled was the rancid scent of mako decay; the first thing he saw was firelight reflected in a pair of deeply red, deeply determined eyes.
Once he thought forgiveness was impossible, that there was no amount of good he could ever hope to accomplish that would atone for the crimes of his past. “If helping to save the world doesn’t earn you your own forgiveness, maybe that’s the real crime.” Tifa said, fingers carding into his hair during their celebrations in Cosmo Canyon. “You’re only human, after all. So be kinder to yourself, Vincent.” Then she smiled, a little soft and a little sad, but her deeply red eyes were filled with hope as she stared at the flower tied in pink ribbon tucked neatly behind his ear. His scalp tingled for the rest of the night.
Once he thought he could never love again, but Tifa had patiently proven him wrong there, too, hadn’t she?
So even though it takes far longer than it really should (he’s still working on being kinder to himself), one day he finally reaches his hand toward the swell of Tifa’s belly and—
—remembers Lucrecia’s glazed eyes as she rocked her full stomach from side to side, hands cocooned around it, him, just two months and she already knew him, dreamed of him, eyes as green as Gaia’s lifeblood, hair as white as pure judgement, her precious baby boy who would bring about a rebirth, a reckoning, the stench of mako decay permeating the nursery—
He blinks as Tifa’s hands wind into his hair, shocking his nerves back to the present. “Hey, it’s okay. Take your time. We’re not going anywhere.” And when he meets her gaze, firm and unwavering and teaming with life, he realizes just how inconceivable it was to have ever feared any part of her—even if this child will also be a part of him. He buries his face into her stomach and finally breathes.
“I hope he has your eyes.”
“Some people might say we have pretty similar eyes—wait, did you say he?”
Vincent smiles against her belly; Galian Beast’s nose has never been wrong, after all.